Old Juana laid her hand on her breast. “It takes youth and strength, wit and the memory of many gods. I’m only an old woman of the sands.” Her eyes glinted at him like a snake’s. “Only an old woman. . . But the desire of the heart is stronger than the sand.”
Cuthbertson sighed, thinking of the machinery abandoned at Lost Mesa when the water dried. “We’ve found nothing stronger than the sand,” he said grimly, “but tell me about it, anyway.” He had a queer liking for the old woman, and he was grateful; besides, if she would talk, he might profit to the extent of a paper for the Smithsonian.
Juana looked out over the desert. After a time she said, “It is a long time since I was a girl, and the young men fluted to me in the cool of the evening, and in the maize-dance my shadow was blest. Like a shadow at midday was the Rainmaker to me. He was my husband.”
Cuthbertson shifted in the shadow so that he faced her, and his long boots creaked.
“There was no town then, and no mines. Only the cuttings of the Lost People in the mesas, and this little pool. We came here, my man and I, together. He said, ‘Stay here and rest, it is a good place. I am going to look for turquoise in the hills, and when I find another good place, I will send word. Then follow.’ He touched my long black hair and smiled upon me, and went. I watched him as he walked down the road into the wings of the sunset. Then I went back to my water-jars and waited.”
She was silent so long that Cuthbertson said, lazily, “Well, Juana, what’s the rest of it?”
“There is no more. I am waiting still for that word that tells me to follow. But it does not come. Somewhere between here and there”—she pointed to the vacant glare,—“the sand took him.”
“The sand. . . ?”
“Yes. Perhaps. The wind blew and the moving sand took him while he slept. Or perhaps the water had gone. I do not know. But if he lived, I should have seen his face, heard his voice. And I see him only in dreams, hear him only when the wind blows on the Lost Tombs of the mesas. There are many such.”
“And—you’re still waiting for word from him?”